Ingenue
by Galad Estel
Summary: Tom Riddle/Lord Voldemort reflects on love and the relationship he has with young Bellatrix Black. One-sided romantic relationship with Voldemort being a manipulative bastard. Age gap. Written for the QLC.


Black-eyed Bellatrix – that's what the boys call her, but her eyes aren't black, they're brown, dark brown. The morons, the idiots, the fools, that's what she calls the boys. And she struts towards me and stares at me through the bars. She has her bottom lip turned out, pouting. She's sulky and stubborn, sensual in a sixteen-year-old body.

'Why are you here?' she says. She has one black-shoed foot over the other, trying to appear bored as she leans against an elm tree. She's not. Her left hand is shaking. I can always tell what she's feeling from that hand. It's also open. If it were curled in a fist, I would leave before she turned temper tantrum, but she's not angry today. She's hopeful. There's a soft look in her eyes. She's cried over me.

'What do you mean?' I ask. I unlock the gates of the school with an incantation. They swing open, and I have her, almost. She totters backwards on her heels, out of my reach.

'You never come,' she says in the tone of a neglected wife, or child.

'What do you mean? I'm here, aren't I?' I smooth out the words as they come, so they don't reflect the impatience I feel.

'Yes,' she says, 'but you haven't been for weeks, and you haven't written. How do you know I haven't got a fellow now? Why should I wait around for you?'

'You shouldn't,' I say, smiling, 'We can stop and then start again when we have the time, continue on our ordinary lives when we have to.'

'You've been seeing someone, haven't you?' She fixes me with those often mistaken eyes. Black or brown, they're cruel when she's cross. Ordinarily I love her anger but not when it's directed at me.

'No,' I say. 'I've been too busy working. I brought you a present.'

'You're going to bribe me?' she says. But she stops backing away.

I hold out the package I've been keeping under my arm – a brown parcel tied up with pink ribbon.

'What is it?'

'It won't hurt you,' I say, 'open it.'

She takes it in her ivory hands and carefully unties the ribbon, pushes the paper aside.

'Dress robes?' she says. 'But I have dress robes.'

'Yes, but these are special.'

'Why?'

'Look at them,'

She unfolds the robes, almost grudgingly, and holds them out in front of her.

'They're black,' she says. 'Black is boring.'

'Black suits you, and these robes were made specifically for you.'

'All my clothes are made for me.'

'Your clothes are tailored for you,' I correct. 'But these robes were inspired by your body. These sleeves were meant for your arms. This bodice is for your breasts alone. This cloth from it's very beginning was crafted with you in mind, and the gems that bedeck it were handpicked by me with my every want straining towards you.'

'You're lying,' she says. But she looks at the robes anyway and holds them against her body. 'It's pretty.' She puts it up to her face. 'It smells like you.'

I smile. 'Yes, after it was made I held it near me, kept it a few nights in my bed, pretending it was you.'

Her whole face changes, softens, caves. Her eyes glitter, and her voice is touched with guilty adoration. 'My lord,' she says, and I have to stop her from falling to her knees before me.

'Forgive me,' she says. 'Forgive me. I should have never doubted you. After all I've done, my sulking, my petty jealousies, you still love me.'

I hold her in my arms. I would like to say she is frail and could be easily broken, but she is not. She is strong. She's a beater on her Quiddich team, the only female. She practices all the time, so her arms are hard with muscle. Her bosom though is still yielding, feminine, and she presses this against me. 'Touch me,' she says. 'Touch me all over.'

'A year, my sweet,' I say. 'Only a year, and then we can be together.'

In a year, she will be seventeen, a woman. Not long after, she will marry. Not me, but someone else. Her family has already picked the man, Rodolphus Lestrange. He is older than her, but only by a few years. Not like the twenty-five that separate me from my pet. She hates the idea of marrying him but knows it's the only way we can be together. She understands that I am too devoted to the cause to marry her or anyone, unless the marriage would further my cause, but the Lestranges are close to me. She will marry one, be Rudolphus's wife and my worshipper. But she wants all our time between now and her binding contract to be spent together, something I cannot give her, yet.

'A year seems so long,' she says, her cheek against my neck. She smells strongly of lavender. Her mother also smelt like lavender when I met her and her other daughters on Platform nine and three quarters, two years ago. Bellatrix hates her mother, hates her whole family most days. She claims that they are cold and controlling, that they are only lukewarm supporters of the Dark Arts, that they are cowards, unwilling to risk anything to aid our cause. Gently, I've reminded her that not everyone is as brave as she. Sometimes I wonder that she wasn't sorted into Gryffindor, for she has the heart of a lion.

'To you, maybe,' I say, 'but I have lived many of them.'

She tilts her head up. 'That's not comforting or romantic.'

'I'm sorry,' I say, 'I'm not very good at this. There haven't been a lot of women in all those years.'

She smiles fawningly at me. 'It's all right,' she says. 'I don't mind dreadfully,' but then she pauses and frowns, 'but there have been some?'

'Some what?'

'Some women.'

'Well, yes, when I was younger there was one or two.'

'Tell me about them,' Bellatrix says. 'Tell me everything they did, everything you did.'

She leans back against another elm tree. Trees are sprouting up everywhere. They've increased drastically since the time I attended the school. I'm surprised Dumbledore hasn't done anything about them, but perhaps he will in time. He's a lazy, disorganized, incompetent man, but he still wouldn't want the Forbidden Forest with all its beastly inhabitants to encroach on the doors of Hogwarts. If I were he, I would just burn down the whole forest, but perhaps it may yet serve a purpose.

'Well?' Bellatrix says. 'Won't you tell me?'

I want to snap 'no' at her, because all her inane questions and worries are wearing me down. She says she loves me. I have no idea what that means. What does it feel like, being 'in love'? I used to think people were making it up, that no one felt anything for anyone else. That what they meant by 'love' was that they benefited in some way from the other person: sex for stability and so on, but I have found that early conclusion to be false. Love can be almost entirely selfless. It can lead someone to die for another. This I cannot understand, but I appreciate it. Because Bellatrix loves me, I have power. I can manipulate her into doing what I want, but to do this I must ensure that she continues to love me. I must be careful of what I do and say, to make sure I do not break her trust, do not crush her feelings. Eventually in time, her love will grow stronger, and I won't have to worry about hurting her as often. Then I can afford to be callous, for now though I must be cautious.

'Bel,' I say gently, 'that's in the past. I was young and inexperienced, and those women hurt me. I would rather not talk about it.'

I hope this is the answer she wants. It's not the truth, but it might make me seem better in her eyes, though it does leave me sounding vulnerable. Her mouth drops opens.

'They hurt you?' she says. 'How could they? How could anyone?'

'People are cruel, Bellatrix. I wasn't always as firm as you see me now. I've been swept up by other people, hurt deeply.'

'I'm sorry,' she says. 'I didn't know.' She holds me closer. 'I won't let anyone hurt you ever again.'

'That's a hard promise to keep, Bellatrix,' I say, close against her ear.

'I know,' she says, 'but I'm a hard person.'


End file.
